The comic artwork of Ryan Claytor.

You may recall this recent comic of mine (above). What you may not recall is that I’m co-teaching a class at Michigan State University this year that combines science and technology research with creating COMICS! It’s a year-long course in which the students are presenting their research through more visual means (sketchnotes, infographics, and comics). Recently, we used eye-tracking devices to discover the efficacy of the images our students were creating. (Are viewers looking at what we want them to? Are we effectively suggesting a hierarchical path of read? Etc.) This was pretty exciting for all of us…INCLUDING ME, as I was able to use one of my images in the testing line-up. Here’s an example of an eye-tracking heatmap (click to enlarge any image):

The above image shows the location and duration of the viewer’s gaze (the larger and more red the area, the longer the viewer gazed). After I saw the above image, I figured that viewers were basically doing what I expected them to, which is looking predominantly at text and faces. In the panels with environments, this particular viewer looked around a bit, but honestly I was a little surprised that there weren’t more gazes in those panels (especially after meticulously crafting a world for the characters…ha-ha!).

Anyhow, along with the heatmap from viewer #1 (above) there is some additional data to look at (below) called a scan-path:

A scan-path is pretty much what it sounds like, it tells you the sequential order in which the image was “read”. The size of the gaze circle also determines the length of gaze. Again, viewer #1’s scan-path was pretty textbook. They started up top, moved in a traditional path of read (top to bottom, left to right). Their sequence of gazes was, by and large, what I would hope for and expect. I was starting to wonder if I would really learn anything from these tests.

Then viewer #2 entered the scene:

Viewer #2’s heatmap showed a good number of additional gazes. At first, I felt like this subject’s reading method might mirror my approach to reading comics, as I tend to linger on areas of artwork a bit longer in an attempt to absorb environment, story cues, and just soak-up some knowledge of alternate approaches to image making. However, the heatmap seemed to get a little disjointed in the lower portion of the page. I’m especially flummoxed by lower-left repetative-“Mm” panel. There seem to be a lot of gazes where there is seemingly no information. I’m not sure if this is a result of viewer #2 being confused (maybe they are not a frequent reader of comics), distracted (we tried to make a controlled testing environment, but the classroom wasn’t far away), or perhaps the eye-tracking software wasn’t callibrated accurately and those gazes should have been moved a bit to the right to correspond with the information present in that tall panel. In this round of testing, the participants were annonymous, so there’s no real way for me to follow-up with further questioning of this viewer. However, it does make me think about possible eye-tracking tests in the future (dividing viewers into comics-readers and non-comics readers, creating a pre and post-test questionaire, recording an oral description from the viewer as they “read” the image and narrate their thoughts, etc).

Regardless, here is viewer #2’s scan-path:

…which raised even more questions for me than the heatmap. If you’re able to take the time to trace viewer #2’s sequence of gazes, you’ll see that there’s a far less linear system of looking. Some of the panels in the 5-panel tier of identically sized panels were forgotten about, some where returned to at a later time, and that odd cluster of gazes in the lower left isn’t simply a momentary eye-jitter, the viewer returned back to that section on multiple occasions! Within that area you can find gazes in the teens, 30’s, 40’s, 50’s, 60’s, 70’s, and returning again near the bottom at gaze #94. I am so baffled by the interest in that section, especially with the lack of visual information. But alas, since our first test of the eye-tracker was anonymous, I may never know. Again, I’m taking notes for potential future experiments.

Finally, there was a third subject. Here is viewer #3’s heatmap:

This viewer seemed to be back on a more predictable trajectory, looking again at words and faces, and occasionally processing some of the environment. However…

…viewer #3’s scan-path seemed to move in a more bouncy fashion, sort of skipping ahead a couple panels, but then returning back to see what they have missed. If you follow this final sequence, the first sequence of gazes take place in the second panel (the first panel with imagery), but then returns to the top of the page to read the title (which, coincidentally, is also read out of order). Then it bounces back down to panel three, skips back to panel two for a moment, returns to panel three, and continues this “two forward, one back” approach to viewing that persists for the majority of the page. While this initially struck me as odd, the more I thought about this approach, it seemed natural. Don’t we all sort of cheat when we read comics? Don’t we all get curious and take a quick peek at the upcoming action to get an idea of things to come? This viewer just happened to do that consistently throughout the read of the entire page.

This also made me wonder if this pre-scanning of panels isn’t more common than I thought. I also wonder how we might be able to track a macro-gaze versus a micro gaze. In comics, a page can be appreciated as a cohesive whole, or it can be viewed in smaller increments (panels, characters, word balloons, words, letters, etc.), but as far as I know (from my limited knowledge of this software) there isn’t a way to understand if the viewer is effectively “widening” their field of vision or “narrowing” their focus to read a sentence or take-in an expression. Perhaps the perplexing series of gazes from viewer #2 was just a broader intake of the page design. Again, I may never get answers to these questions from my anonymous test subjects, but I might include a relevant questionnaire to determine such things if given the opportunity to work with this technology again.

In the meantime, I thought I’d share this data with you and see if it sparks any discussion in the comments section below. I welcome your thoughts.

Very interesting. I never really thought about what other people did when reading comics (*cough*NARCISSIST). I find myself intentionally avoiding looking at the whole page in an effort not to ‘spoil’ the page for myself. And in really exciting stories, I almost completely ignore the art and just plow through the word bubbles getting as much plot as quickly as possible. With an artist like Chris Ware, the whole page would be red for me, because I’m double checking to make sure I ‘got’ everything. His art made me value other artists more, so I do spend more time soaking in the environment, as you mentioned, in an effort to appreciate what the artist is going for overall with the narrative.

Interesting stuff. Ryan, did you do this with yourself? I think it would be fascinating to see how someone who actually creates comics reads a comic. In the past, when instructors would talk about eye flow, I seem to not follow those planned sequences. My eyes go everywhere. At least, I think they do! Of course, this didn’t apply to comics as much as to paintings and illustrations.

Don: Yah, I do my best to have self-control when entering a page and try not to spoil it for myself, but it’s kind of like me and cupcakes; my self-control only lasts so long. 🙂

John: Ha-ha! I know the self-conscious feeling! I find myself noticing my eyes darting around the page a lot more than I suspected. I’ll be sure to share future findings if I manage to get my hands on this software again.

Bruce: I was not one of these three test subjects. I was, however, a viewer for OTHER people’s illustrations. But, I like your suggestion for having a group of comic CREATORS to see if they have different reading patterns than comic READERS or non-comic readers.